Yesterday, I blogged about Serving Up Memory, the anthology written by the Camden Writers. Now we’re thinking about exactly what kind of book we want to publish this year. Although there are lots of ideas floating around, so far the only thing we’re certain about is that we’ll have an earlier deadline for submissions.

Today, I’m focusing on personal projects, current and future. A person can’t live as long as I have without having some experience and expertise to share. Stories are meant to be told, and most of us older (er, make that mature) people have the notion, perhaps erroneous, that someone somewhere might actually benefit from what we have to say.

I’m putting the Camden Writers’ 2015 project on the back burner for today and concentrating on some of my own writing goals.

Submit to various publications. Writing an article is much less daunting and time consuming that writing a book, and if I come up with a specific plan (time frame, specific magazine or publication, daily routine), my chances are better than doing what I’m doing now. Nothing.

Finish a “beach book” that I began toying with four or five years ago. It includes photographs taken from the coast of Maine all the way down to beaches in Georgia. Numerous locations in-between are highlighted too, especially Myrtle Beach and the Crystal Coast of North Carolina. My working title is Seas the Day, and addition to the collection of photographs, it contains essays written by friends and yours truly.

Add to, edit, and then re-edit a book about teaching. I hesitate to call it a how-to book because that sounds both boring and presumptuous. I don’t claim to know everything, but I do claim to know what has and has not worked for me and many of the other teachers that I know.

Continue to knock out a few blog posts each week. I’ve narrowed them down to three: one about any and everything I want to discuss (Mom’s Musings), Crossing the Bridge (about the book of the same time), and this one about reading and writing. Some colleagues and I started a psychology blog for our students a few years ago, and although it’s still there, it’s dying on the vine for lack of attention. Time to cut it loose?

Figure out the best marketing approach. There’s a fine line between inundating people with news about projects and keeping them hidden. I recall being at the SCWW (South Carolina Writers’ Workshop) one year and hearing a presenter ask, “Do you write books to keep them stowed in a box under your bed? If so, then fine. If not, then listen to some ideas on social media.“ She said it much better than I, but you get the message.

Read something interesting, useful, entertaining, inspiring, educational, or just plain old fun every day. Right now I’m reading When Crickets Cry at the suggestion of one of my brothers and am learning quite a bit about the miraculous human heart.

No time like the present to get started with something. Hmm. Should I read the novel first, or should I get back to the beach book?

What are some of your writing/reading projects? How do you stay focused? How do you decide what to work on first?